“Lady Susan wanted you to be aware Orion has been stolen.”
Relief washed over him. He’d been on edge ever since his rude reception at the baron’s home. He’d a sneaking suspicion Gabriel’s hunch Arthur Coleman had returned was correct. There was no love lost between him and Susan, but she was apparently safe. “Right, Lever,” he told the new driver. “On to Thicketford Manor with all possible haste.”
Halfway into the carriage, he decided to trust a little voice that whispered Arthur might possibly be involved in Orion’s disappearance. It would be reassuring to hear from Bertrand that such wasn’t the case. “On second thought,” he said. “We’ll go by way of Withins Hall first.”
Fifteen minutes later, he had the brass knocker in hand, his jaw clenched in case the same rude young man appeared. He relaxed when Whiteside’s butler opened the door and ushered him into the foyer.
“I’m afraid the baron has gone out to the stables, my lord,” Judson explained. “It’s a place he rarely visits, so I expect him back momentarily if you’d like to wait.”
Gooseflesh crept over Griff’s nape. Could it be the baron was involved in the theft? “If it’s all the same to you, I’ll make my way there.”
Judson hesitated.
“It’s a matter of some urgency and I’m sure your master won’t mind,” Griff insisted, already halfway out the door.
“To your left, my lord,” the butler shouted. “All the way to the rear of the house.”
Griff glanced up at Lever still seated on the driver’s bench of his carriage. Frederick would have been a handy person to have at his side, but the young footman was still at Clifton Heights. Lever was too elderly and frail to be of much use if an altercation arose.
Cursing the inevitable crunch of his boots on the gravel pathway, he cautiously entered the torchlit stable, furious when he saw the same young man who’d turned him away threatening a frenzied Orion with a horsewhip. Striding to confront the wretch and wrest the whip from his hand, he stopped dead when he saw a young woman kneeling by Bertrand Coleman’s body.
Preoccupied with trying to recall where he’d seen her before, he failed to pay attention to the glint of warning in the woman’s eyes. He fell to his knees and surrendered to a sickening darkness when something struck him hard from behind.
*
Vaguely aware Wiggohad coshed an intruder, Arthur hurried out of Orion’s stall. He was disappointed it wasn’t Stringer lying in a heap in the straw. However, getting rid of Susan Crompton’s fancy man would be immensely gratifying.
“Ye’ve killed two men,” Tillie wailed, still on her knees beside his father. “I want no part of killing.”
She cowered away, sobbing when Wiggo threatened to smack her.
“Wot we gonna do wiv the bodies?” Tripp asked.
Arthur had to think quickly. Everything was happening too fast. “The earl must have arrived in a carriage. Go get it from the front of the house.”
“Wot about the driver?”
Arthur gritted his teeth. Was he expected to solve every problem? “Deal with him.”
Left alone with Tillie, he bristled when the earl moaned.
“’e’s not dead,” she said.
“Well, he soon will be,” he replied, retrieving a length of baling twine from a hook. “Bind his hands and feet.”
She shook her head, until he raised his hand. “No good will come of whatever you’re planning, Arthur,” she said as she reluctantly did his bidding.
“That’s Baron Whiteside to you, my girl. And nobody will find the bodies when Wiggo and Tripp send the carriage over the edge of Woltham Quarry.”
“But it flooded years ago.”
“Precisely.”
Orion’s Revenge
The earl cameto a moment or two before Wiggo and Tripp arrived with the carriage. Clearly infuriated to find himself bound hand and foot, he began to berate Arthur, all the while struggling against his bonds. Tillie could have told him it was a waste of time. Arthur tore a strip off her petticoat, gagged his captive and checked the bindings. She’d tried not to tie the rough twine too tightly so it wouldn’t hurt as much, but Arthur pulled the knots tighter.
She retreated to a dark corner of the stables as the protesting nobleman was carried to the carriage by the thugs and dumped inside. The baron’s body was hefted in next. She prayed Arthur wouldn’t decide to consign her to the deep lake at the bottom of the quarry. If she was dragged off to Manchester, another opportunity for escape might eventually arise.